INTRODUCTION TO COGNITION
HTTP://EDUCATIONPORTAL.COM/ACADEMY/LESSON/INTR
O-TO-INTELLIGENCE.HTML
Cognitive Psychology =
Study of mental
processes…how humans
receive info from their
environment & then
• Modify it
• Make it meaningful
• Store the info
• Retrieve the info
• Use the info
• Communicate info to
others
WHAT IS
COGNITION?
 Literally
“thinking”
 The brain’s
representations of
information in the
world around us
CIRCLE OF THOUGHT
5 Core Functions of
Human Thinking
Describe
 Elaborate
 Decide
 Plan
 Guide/Act

CONCEPTS

A mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or
people.

Enables us to chunk large amounts of information – don’t
need to treat every new piece of information as unique.
Chairs
 Holidays
 Political ideologies
 Psychologists

Concepts = Categories
Categories: mental groupings of similar objects, events, and people.
.
What’s the category?
Human infant
Photo albums
Jewelry
Dog
Insurance documents
Data discs
Tapestries
“Things to take from a burning house”
CONCEPTS

Category Hierarchies – We organize concepts into
category hierarchies
Prototypes = objects or events that
represent concepts:
Mental image or best example of a
category
SOLVING PROBLEMS
 Algorithm

A methodical, logical rule or procedure that
guarantees solving a particular problem
 Heuristic

A rule-of-thumb strategy that often allows us to
make judgments and solve problems efficiently
(speedier but error-prone)
OBSTACLES…
In the Thompson family there are 5 brothers, and
each brother has one sister. If you count Mrs.
Thompson, how many females are there in the
Thompson family?
 Fifteen percent of people in Topeka have unlisted
phone numbers. You select 200 names at random
from the Topeka phone book. How many of these
people can be expected to have unlisted phone
numbers?

 Without
lifting your pencil from the paper,
draw no more than 4 lines that will cross
through all 9 dots.
OBSTACLES TO PROBLEM SOLVING
Irrelevant Information
 Unnecessary constraints (self-imposed
limitations)

OBSTACLES TO PROBLEM SOLVING


Confirmation Bias
 A tendency to search for information
that confirms one’s perceptions
 Seinfeld Example
Fixation
 The inability to see a problem from a
new perspective
 Mental Set = tendency to
approach situations in a certain
way because that method worked
in the past
 Functional Fixedness = form of
cognitive bias in which a person is
unable to think of other, more
creative uses for an object aside
from its traditional use
Learned
REPRESENTATIVENESS HEURISTIC
A rule of thumb for judging the
likelihood of things in terms of how
well they seem to represent, or
match, particular prototypes
 people determine the probability
of something based on assumptions
or past experience
 used quite often when making
decisions….we make our decisions
based on the likeliness of a sample to
occur in the population.

HEURISTICS EXAMPLE
Pick a number between 1 – 9
 Subtract 5
 Multiply by 3
 Square the number (ex 6 x 6 = 36)
 Add the 2 digits together (ex 3 + 6 = 9)
 If your number is less than 5, add 5 HOWEVER
if you number is 5 or above, subtract 4
 Multiply by 2
 Subtract 6
 Find the corresponding letter in the alphabet
 Think of a country that begins with that letter
 Find the 2nd letter of the country & think of a
mammal that begins with that letter

HEURISTICS EXAMPLE CONTINUED
Pick a number between 1 – 9
 Find the corresponding letter
in the alphabet
 Think of a country that begins
with that letter
 Find the 2nd letter of the
country & think of a mammal
that begins with that letter
 Think of the color of that
mammal


Is it a grey elephant from
Denmark?
This demonstration of
cognitive heuristics works
best for people who are most
familiar with European
countries, for the load caused
by doing the math pops the
name Denmark into their
heads most rapidly (instead
of the Dominican Republic).
And while people can, if they
give it some time, think of an
animal whose name starts
with an E besides an
Elephant (how about an Elk),
Elephants are cognitively
easier.
USING AND MISUSING HEURISTICS

Availability
Heuristic


Estimating the
likelihood of
events based on
their
availability in
memory
If instances come
to mind = we
presume such
events are
common
USING AND MISUSING HEURISTICS

Anchoring Heuristic
Starting with an implicitly suggested
reference point (the "anchor") and
make adjustments to it to reach their
estimate
 Once the anchor is set, it usually wont
change.
 Videos =
 http://educationportal.com/academy/lesson/heuristics.
html
